Monday, October 11, 2010

Force Unleashed II – Where to Buy, (Or) The Pre-order Rant

The Force Unleashed II is coming out the end of the month and I’m trying to decide where to get it. Now, I’m gonna get it. I liked 1, and all the little annoying things in 1 are supposed to be fixed. So, yeah.

If I get it at gamestop preorder gets me a Maulkiller skin (Darth Maul/Starkiller hybrid) and a silver lightsaber crystal (reduce Force power used and looks f#$%ing badass). Amazon has a preorder bonus of 2 bonus levels and $10 my next game purchase. I also already have $20 off from preordering Halo Reach, so it’ll be quite a bit cheaper there, and making the next game cheap and theoretically the next game etc… Nasty loop there Amazon has, isn’t it.

I’m leaning towards Amazon due to the cost factor. In all likelihood the ‘exclusive’ Maulkiller skin and saber crystal (silver! What’s more badass than a silver saber?) will be DLC, and prolly for less than the saved $20 from Amazon.

Preorder bonuses really piss me off. I shouldn’t have to put this much though into where I’m going to get something. War for Cybertron made you chose which extra character you wanted – Shockwave, Jazz or.. some other dude. Things got really stupid when Star Trek Online came out. Now I didn’t get STO, but if I did, some of those looked pretty damn good. I’d be pissed missing out on the other options.

I think preorder bonuses should have no effect on the game itself. Give me a soundtrack, a mini hint book, a comic or a t-shirt or something. These options all cost more than a code to redeem DLC, but oh well. If you want to stand out from the other guy, stand out.

**** Full disclosure **** Free Juggernaut for Ultimate Alliance 2 was badass. Also while I didn’t pre-order Batman: Arkham Asylum, Gamestop did have extra codes laying around I got all available DLC for free. But you know, I did go into Gamestop to buy Batman not Walmart. Maybe they don’t have to bribe people after all.